# 16

# frame.

I learned the frame during my first year as a school social worker. I attended a two-day training for the social-emotional curriculum, Top Twenty Teens.

I recall being at the training, and feeling like I was exactly where I was supposed to be. I loved it. The training was somehow very personal, and aligned with self-improvement, as much as it was an opportunity to experience and learn skills, tools, and strategies that could be transferred to the students I was working with.

It was the 2007-08 school year when I attended the training. I am fairly certain that I was not thinking growth outcomes, or transferable skills. I did want to teach the kids skills. Obviously, it’s easiest to teach the skills that resonate. The frame resonated…it made sense. But this was several years before the big epiphany I mentioned in the introduction and the ‘why?’.

I have an entirely different approach to the frame now. I find the frame useful to disrupt limiting thought patterns or beliefs.

The following is taken from a blog post that captured the frame @ sallyseifferco.blog:

We can tie together a few of our practices as we examine the usefulness of the frame in our ordinary, day-to-day experience.

Start here.

When we are practicing self-care, or caring for ourself, it’s best to practice new skills, tools, and strategies with general intentions. The goal may be to understand how the new skill, tool, or strategy works. What this means, is that it may not be useful to apply new learning, or ideas, to your most difficult life event, situation, or circumstance.

To practice using the frame, choose one of your roles from the ‘6 roles’ or ‘Broad View’ practice. Choose a role that you have the least resistance to.

What does this role look, feel, sound like - capture the essence of this role as you imagine it inside your frame. We are going to integrate the picture in the frame with ‘get’. What results, or data, is showing up in this area of your life? What are you GETting?

If I were to see a picture of a road trip in my current life experience, it would be non existent. I would see a picture of my metallic grey subaru outback, and I would see the Apple CarPlay with the Audible app and maybe my variety of music apps. I would actually get excited. I love road trips. However, the results - my data (my ‘get’) is that I haven’t been on one in several years. What am I saying about road trips? “I love road trips.” The energy is a bit elusive. The road trip is something that is out in front of me, it is going to happen some day. I suppose if my mindset is that it’s going to happen…then it’s always kind of hanging out there…I’m going to do it at some point. As I examine my ‘see’ a bit more, I learn that I may see the ‘road trip’ as ‘fluff’. The road trip is not as important as staying in Denver, and working on this project. When this project is complete, THEN I can go on a road trip. If I go on a road trip, I won’t have time to work on this project.

I tend to get a bit consumed with things. For me, the reason I created the 6 roles/Broad View is exactly for this reason. If my desire is to enjoy myself now, not in this elusive future state once I get the really important stuff done, then I need to be curious about these different areas of my life and the roles I desire to play.

My ‘see’ needs to change to ‘I can plan a road trip.’ Or some version of ‘it’s happening now’ v. it will happen when other more important things get done.

I like considering road trips. When I have felt overwhelmed and practiced 6 roles, considering road trips created a sense of fun, and I suppose a bit of escape. A road trip is an adventure. A road trip is something to look forward to. Positive expectation. The anticipation of something fun happening.

The action here would be to plan. This is where focus comes in handy. When I create a time to focus on planning a road trip, all of a sudden the road trip becomes a reality. I am currently only considering road trips when I practice 6 roles. I have been consumed with this project, so I haven’t really considered the reality of a road trip. My action is to create time to plan a road trip. In my journaling, a story I would write begins: She loves to plan road trips. (and yes, the word ‘plan’ can be elusive…let’s not overthink this…because really, the feeling of positive expectancy is enough).

Once you recognize the pattern, you can intervene anywhere. Flip the limiting paradigm to create a desired state.

Something interesting to note, is that when you focus on the thinking patterns that contribute to the state, or mood (emotion, feeling), and you recognize that when you care about yourself enough to shift your thinking to align with a desired, or preferred, way to feel (balanced - not too much, not too little, enough) it takes the focus off of behavior. Our behavior, what we do or don’t do, will become a natural, or flowing, part of our experience as it is driven by an inspired, or balanced state.

If your belief in self-care is an action, a do, a behavior, it may not shift your feeling state. You can go get a pedicure, but if you have not shifted your thinking to create or allow a state of balance, then you are getting a pedicure as an observable action or behavior, but your inside world may not be demonstrating a state that is contributing to feeling good.

The goal is to feel good. Our energetic state is vibrational. Just like we don’t doubt, or argue, the law of gravity; we need not doubt, or argue, the theory of relativity. We attract at a vibrational level. Like energy creates like energy. Our thoughts create a feeling state. The energetic feeling state summons our interpretation of what we experience. We create the filter, we tell the story. The skill of self-awareness allows us to notice our thoughts. When we notice limiting thoughts, we can choose to disrupt the pattern and tell our own story. The story that allows for what IS possible. This story creates an energetic feeling state of possibility. Now we attract at this higher vibrational state. Anything can happen. Anything is possible. Now THIS is me.